There is good news and bad news. Good News is we are now back online, but unfortunately the long-term prognosis is bad news, in that our ageing server hardware isn't looking too healthy and has required some serious intervention today to get it back up and limping along.

Not considerably bad considering its getting on for more than 6 years old with practically 24/7 usage over that time.

Sadly due to the fact we have always been a hand to mouth community that is not swimming in mountains of cash, we chose to co-locate our own bought and supplied server, which has successfully over the past 6 years or so helped us to vastly reduce the overall costs of keeping the forum online and keeping it fast and free for its user base.

As a direct result of our financial constraints this also means our support options have become very limited as we are essentially supporting our own equipment, that is expensive to repair and replace.

We all knew at some point a serious hardware issue would bite us, and we are currently looking at options to move the forum back to a managed hosting solution in the short-term, but this is likely to come at a vastly increased financial penalty that I know long-term the site will be unable to sustain on a permanent basis.

The overbearing fact is that SEATCupra.net is around 70% privately funded in its current state with the rest coming from occasional advertising support, which has been not only harder to secure but harder to manage for myself, my work role changed a few years ago and I have a lot less free time than I did in SCN's early days to chase funding and keep things running on a more even keel in working hours.

However as I type this the system is back and running today and seems at the moment to be ok, our priority is to ensure we update our most recent backup files and then once we have selected a new managed solution we will start moving the forum and site in due course.

We are actively looking at solutions to instigate a more solid finance stream for the forum, but that is very dependent on personal time factors, and willing sponsors.

There maybe additional downtime during the moving process, and there is likely to be speed issues, so apologies in advance.

Facebook and Twitter are of course always available for updates should the worst happen and it falls over in the interim.

I have had a few pm and emails etc tonight regarding funding help etc.

We are not in dire straits yet, and at no risk of disappearing any time soon.

We have other avenues to look into first, and currently have enough funding to go to a managed setup for several months without it causing a problem, it's not desperate yet.

But I feel I needed to tell folks how it is and that it may not continue to be sustainable in the longterm.

From outside it's more a time management issue, and chasing the funding that we hope is still available a little more aggressively.

We are always reluctant to go cap in hand to the members, because it can be a case of too many cooks spoil the broth.

Though we've no doubt many of you would help us, you have said as much in the past, it's true that many may not want to and that's an unfair balance in our eyes.

So we would then have to look into ways to reward the people that contribute more than those who don't, and that is another problem to overcome. I'd be lying if I didn't say there is an element of control that comes from being privately owned that allows us to remain impartial.

But our current priority is to get the hosting shifted to a more stable situation, and plan our next move from there. We still have plenty of time to make a considered plan going forward.

We need to refocus how we gain our funding, we have over the past few years due to work load vs free time been a bit lax in chasing our sponsors. Based on how receptive they continue to be in helping us ultimately decides how effective a model the forum is going forward.

We have to consider factors like how many are transitioning to other social mediums such as Facebook.

The main factors for us are speed, reliability and bandwidth all of which come at cost for a site of this activity.

I for once would have no issue paying for membership if it comes to that,

The amount of information we can get on this site is much often invaluable and a lot cheaper than going to a garage etc as well

I'm sure I'm not the only person with this opinion either

Lol I PM'd Mark although I did not want to flog the dead horse again about membership. I suggested a limited time donation page. One off for a couple of weeks.

I personally don't expect any reward, privileges etc...
I might however be bribed with a gold username j/k.

Some spare money with no lower limit can be passed on by members to help out.
I too have received far more back from this forum than I have contributed. It has saved me countless times on dealership fee's, advice, part numbers, help, for sale section etc...

The admin are busy enough with sourcing other means of revenue so until they decide otherwise and have exhausted all other avenues, we will have to wait.

Autotechnica should defo have a word with the site admins and sort out a sponsorship. They can have their own section. The build thread alone has peaked people interests in their services. I'm sure they will invoke a lot of new custom.